Constance (Constance #1)(7)
To make an accurate image of a human consciousness, a subject had to be both consenting and in a calm frame of mind. Palingenesis covered this ad nauseam during orientation, but Con didn’t see how it applied in this situation. It wasn’t as if she and her aunt had been close.
“Honestly? I haven’t seen my aunt since I was six. It’s sad, obviously, but I’m not upset. It’s not like I knew her.”
Laleh nodded and led her to the changing room. In the time it took to refresh Con’s neural record, her clothes would be pressed and waiting for her. Dry-cleaning jeans and a T-shirt seemed a little excessive, but the service was complimentary, so she went with the flow. Stripping to her underwear, Con examined herself in the mirror. She’d put on fifteen pounds in the years since the accident and didn’t like how it looked or felt. Tentatively, she flexed her right leg, which was already sore from her mad dash through the protesters. Her scars twisted like barbed wire—the reason she hadn’t worn a skirt since the wreck. After she’d been discharged from the hospital, Con had blown off physical therapy and allowed her new knee to atrophy. Like everything else, it was her own damn fault that her leg was chronically stiff and uncooperative, but maybe after New Year’s, she’d try again to get into some kind of a workout routine.
Absently, she ran a hand down her left arm—the sleeve of tattoos was almost complete; only a few gaps remained. If you knew how to read it, the sleeve told her story and that of her family going back generations, spun from threads reaching across three continents. At her wrist, a lion held a yellow flower in its jaws and clutched a red lotus in its talons—the Barbary lion, the official symbol of England, where her mother’s family originated. The red lotus represented Vietnam, and the yellow trumpet was the national flower of Nigeria—the ancestral homes of her paternal grandfather and grandmother, respectively. Circling her bicep was her father’s story, which she’d learned not from her mother but from countless hours at Gamma Jol’s kitchen table. After her grandmother passed, Con had hated the idea of that history being lost. The tattoos were one way of keeping it alive while adding her own chapter. She traced the pattern on her shoulder, where she had memorialized the tragic car crash that had changed her life.
Con slipped on a backless hospital gown and then a monogrammed bathrobe and slippers. She loved these bathrobes. It was like being swaddled in a warm cloud. She would have stolen one already had it not been too luxuriously bulky to hide. Funny thing was, Con was sure Laleh would’ve been delighted to give her one, only her pride wouldn’t allow it. She was too keenly aware of her poverty to ask for gifts.
Back in the atrium, Laleh settled Con in a plush armchair and threw today’s menu from her LFD to Con’s. It popped up in Con’s field of vision, and she gave it a quick read despite already knowing exactly what she wanted. Out in the real world, Con couldn’t afford to splurge on sushi, but Palingenesis kept a chef on staff. They never used a food printer and served authentic farm-grown tuna. She ordered rainbow rolls and edamame. She would have killed for some warm sake to take the edge off, but alcohol was prohibited twelve hours before a refresh. She winced and counted backward. What time had she quit drinking last night? She should be fine by the time the procedure began.
“Mani-pedi?” Laleh asked. Another of the many amenities provided to distract clients from the real reason for their visit. Better to focus on freshly pressed clothes, cozy bathrobes, and the soothing beauty of Japanese koi. It had taken a while to come around on someone touching her while she was unconscious, but waking up to her nails being done was too good to pass up.
“I was thinking maybe a light orange.”
Laleh noted Con’s selection, then hesitated. “Confession.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“I looked up Awaken the Ghosts and listened to some of your old songs.”
“Oh yeah? You didn’t have to do that,” Con said, although what she meant was I wish you hadn’t done that.
“Seriously,” Laleh said. “You guys were amazing. I get why there was all that buzz around your band. Your voice is beautiful.”
“Thanks,” Con replied, hoping that would be the end of it.
“Do you still sing?”
Con nodded, reluctant to get on this subject. She’d tried to quit music after the accident, but it was a part of her that she found impossible to leave behind. It would have been easier to live without her leg. Still, she avoided the kind of music that had landed Awaken the Ghosts its recording contract, instead gigging with local bands that didn’t have a prayer of making it. That kept her safe, or so she told herself.
“Will you tell me the next time you’ve got a show? I’d love to come.”
“I will,” Con said, neglecting to mention the shows she’d just agreed to do with Weathervane.
Laleh smiled, sensing she’d crossed a line. “Okay, well, anyway, I really loved it. I’ll be back in a few. Why don’t you get started?”
Before every refresh, there were always the same forms to fill out, the same waivers to be signed. Initial here to indemnify Palingenesis in the event that the refresh accidentally turns your brain into a three-cheese omelet. It went on for pages and pages like that in mind-numbing legalese. Laleh threw the forms to Con’s LFD and excused herself. Con took off her slippers, tucked her feet under her, and opened the first page, the medical questionnaire.